Assessing the impacts of sustainability teaching at higher education institutions

The necessity of sustainability teaching (ST) has recently become increasingly crucial due to several interrelated factors. The world faces significant environmental challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, pollution, and resource depletion. ST equips students with the knowledge and tools to address these issues and work towards a more sustainable future. ST helps students understand these complex challenges and fosters holistic problem-solving skills. ST at higher education institutions (HEIs) can take place in various modalities, including lectures, hands-on projects, field trips, simulations, and collaborative learning to enhance knowledge and develop competencies. The impact of ST at HEIs may be measured through multiple avenues, such as student surveys, interviews with faculty, and research studies on the effectiveness of sustainability courses. This paper reports on a study that assessed the current impact of ST at HEIs. The data collection used a multi-methods approach, which included a bibliometric analysis, the assessment of a set of case studies, and an international survey conducted with teaching staff from HEIs in 38 countries. The evidence supporting ST is presented and discussed, indicating how current teaching programmes are being delivered and their degree of success. The results show that the literature on ST has evolved substantially over the past years and covers a wide range of areas, as demonstrated by the various clusters. The case studies, in turn, show multiple real-world examples of how HEIs across diverse geographic regions have implemented ST practices and their implications. The paper’s novelty lies in its approach to evaluating sustainability education’s effectiveness and broader impacts on HEIs. It offers a unique approach by integrating assessments across multiple disciplines, showing how ST impacts students´ education. Also, the study tracks the impacts of the sustainability literature, providing insights into how sustainability education shapes students’ professional prospects. Finally, the paper shows the status of sustainability education across different HEIs and countries, offering a broader perspective on how it is implemented into practice. The study concludes by suggesting measures that may maximize the impact of sustainability courses in HEIs curricula and, among other things, the overall campus culture toward sustainable development.

Description

Discover Sustainability articles are published open access under a CC BY licence (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence). The CC BY licence is the most open licence available and considered the industry 'gold standard' for open access; it is also preferred by many funders. This licence allows readers to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and to alter, transform, or build upon the material, including for commercial use, providing the original author is credited. Rights and permissions Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Keywords

Sustainability teaching Sustainable development Higher education Curricula Universities Higher education institutions

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10284/14524

Citation

Leal Filho, W., Viera Trevisan, L., Sivapalan, S. et al. Assessing the impacts of sustainability teaching at higher education institutions. Discov Sustain 6, 227 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-025-01024-z